What Is The Deal With The Video Game Dude Face?

Have you noticed that game heroes have all started to look alike? I mean, look at the twelve guys above. They could all be cousins. They could all be brothers. These aren’t randomly-plucked characters. They are the protagonists of eleven of the most popular video games of the last few years and one that is coming out soon.

So what do we call them? And more confusingly where do they come from. They have no obvious genetic inheritance. They’re not Japanese pretty boys.

They’re not star-spangled meat men.

They’re not braniacs turned into heroes by extraordinary events.

They’re like… Josh Brolin and Paul Walker had a full grown baby boy. And then that baby didn’t shave for 3.6 days. They look grown in a lab that grows men who have seen things. But not enough things to obscure killer bone structure, pluck out tousled locks, or puff up post-traumatic jowls.

So what do we call these experienced, but sensitive, guys?

His—its—name, from now on, shall be: Video Game Dude Face.

VIDEO GAME DUDE FACE.

UPDATE 4:40 PM: Here is a compelling theory that may not sit well with the video game fans who have spent hundreds of hours manipulating these men:

@jbasher @jwherrman That is the archetypal face that graces the covers of thousands of romance novels. But don't tell the gamer boys.

— LoriGrunin (@Lori Grunin)

Lori Grunin

@LoriGrunin

@jbasher @jwherrman That is the archetypal face that graces the covers of thousands of romance novels. But don’t tell the gamer boys.